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June 11, 2005

Crashing Into Trees

Going for a drive is supposed to be pleasant. It’s the kind of thing you do on a lazy Sunday when all else fails and certainly not the kind of thing you do on a busy Tuesday. But of course yours truly would end up doing this. Paul Winters is on his way to the house in his brand new second-hand car. We’ve decided to drive out to the Bog of Allen Museum, part of the Bog of Allen Project in Lullymore, and have a look. So when Paul arrives I hop in the car and unfold the large wrinkled map of Kildare. I am going to be the navigator for our journey. This is actually going to involve some real navigating on my part since neither of us know where the Hell Lullymore is. Paul has a vague idea of how to get there and thinks we should go through a route that would bring us through the Curragh. “Absolutely not,” I say. “I am the navigator. Master of the map. Sovereign of the streets.” A pause and brief silence fills the car. “And,” I continue, “I know a shortcut. Take the next turn left. Over that bridge lies the road to our destination.”

In hindsight such bravado in the navigating department should be brushed aside in favour of good old fashioned logic and general map reading abilities. We’re driving along now at a good pace. One thing I may have omitted to mention thus far is that Paul is a learner drive. This fact makes me nervous. Me being nervous makes Paul nervous. The two of us being nervous cancels out and we end up both being edgy in stead. “Look out for that car!” “I can see it ya know!” We pass through Milltown in the blink of an eye. It’s going to be the start of a series of one road villages. In the distance the Hill of Allen is rising before us. “We shouldn’t be going up the Hill of Allen!” says Paul with an air of distress in his voice. “We’re going my way,” I say, “and anyway we’re not actually going up the Hill of Allen.” At that point the road starts sloping skyward and it looks like we are, in fact, going up the Hill of Allen after all. I remain quiet and hope we just come down again, which we eventually do.

On through Allen and to Kilmeage where we come to a bit of a crossroads and a dilemma. There’s four roads to choose from, I can’t figure out which one we’re supposed to take and I won’t let Paul see the map cause it’s my job. So I guess. Now this is where you would not be shunned for supposing that we took our first wrong turn but as it happens it wasn’t. That would follow soon after at a crucial make or break choice of “left” or “right” at Allenwood. “Left or right?” Paul says. “Left or right? You gotta pick one.” I muse. “Right,” I say. “It is most definitely right.” At this point you’d do good to actually root out a map of Kildare and see how wrong taking a right was. We end up in bloody Derrinturn. “Liam, are we lost?” Paul asks as we pull over into a petrol station. “No. We are certainly not lost because I have now figured out that if we continue along this road we will very soon cross the border into County Offaly..” Paul stares at me, mouth a jar. “I hear Offaly is nice in the Spring,” I say.

So after we turn around, drive all the way back to where we should have taken a left, take a left and then we manage to drive pass the bloody Museum! The best was yet to come in the crowning of our mis-adventures across the Kildare countryside. We obviously needed to turn around to get back to the museum, so, at a quiet fork in the road, with no other cars or distractions about, Paul begins to turn the car around. But as he does we don’t seem to be going quite 360 degrees and also I can’t help noticing that were driving at a steady pace towards a rather large tree. In times of peril you always imagine you’d panic just a little but this was not the case. Neither Paul nor I were in the least bit off-put that we were about to make a collision with a sycamore tree that didn’t appear to leaping out of the way. In my head I was thinking “tell Paul were about to hit a tree” but then decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. That was my third mistake.

Trains, Buses & Automobiles by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist.

Posted by LiamG at June 11, 2005 01:36 AM